The new Samsung Series 7 Chronos has changed quite a lot since we saw
the 2011 model. It’s a little bigger and heavier than before, and is an
extra centimetre longer in width and depth, but the slight increase in
weight makes it feel sturdy and well built. It’s powerful, too, thanks
to a quad-core 2.4GHz Intel Core i7-3635QM processor that can turbo
boost to 3.4GHz and 8GB of RAM. It whizzed through our multimedia
benchmarks, scoring 90 overall. This is just 10 points shy of our
reference processor, a desktop Core i5-3570K, so it shouldn’t have any
problem handling multiple applications at the same time, or those that
require brute force processing.
It has a 1TB mechanical hard drive rather than a faster SSD, but the
mechanical drive makes much more sense in a laptop such as this, as it
provides enough storage for many applications and a large media library.
GAME TIME
The Chronos has dedicated graphics in the form of an AMD Radeon HD
8870M graphics processor, and it performed very well in our Dirt
Showdown benchmark test, producing a very smooth 51.4fps at a resolution
of 1,280x720 with graphics quality set to High. It could even run the
graphically challenging Crysis 2 at the same resolution and quality
setting, providing a comfortable average frame rate of 43.4fps. Sadly,
it could only manage an average frame rate of 20fps at Ultra quality and
a higher resolution 1,920x1,080. Evem so, the Chronos is a fairly
capable gaming laptop, even if it isn’t intended to be.
Whether you prefer to play games, watch movies or employ your
creativity with video-editing softare, you’ll love the Chronos’s
stunning 15.6in Full HD touchscreen. Its glossy finish is a little
reflective, but it really helped primary colours look rich and vivid in
our solid colour image tests; blacks were deep and lit evenly across the
screen. Whites looked ever so slightly grey, but this wasn’t
particularly noticeable in everyday use.
The display’s main highlight, though, is its 10-point touch support.
It’s not particularly well suited to playing multitouch games, as simply
using the onscreen keyboard made it wobble quite a lot, but it’s very
responsive and easy to use. We had no trouble using it to display the
Windows 8 Charms bar, switch between individual windows or open
individual links and files. Occasionally, it failed to register our
touch towards the outer extremities of the screen when switching
internet tabs, for example, but on the whole it was very accurate and
precise.
We found typing on the Chronos very comfortable. Its full-sized
Chiclet-style keys provided lots of tactile feedback, and we like its
numberpad. The edge of the Chronos’s keyboard tray dug into our wrists
slightly, which proved irritating, but there’s ample room for adjusting
your typing position thanks to the generous size of its wrist rest.
We liked its large all-in-one touchpad, too. It felt like it was
positioned a little too far to the right at times, as our hand often
hovered dangerously close to its top corner, but we never found
ourselves brushing it accidentally while typing. It was very accurate
during everyday use and although it doesn’t have physical buttons, we
found the clickable touchpad easy to use. It also provided a surprising
amount of grip and control when using multitouch gestures as well, which
made tasks such as pinch-zooming and two-finger scrolling very easy to
perform.
IMMORTAL CHRONOS
One of the Chronos’s most impressive features is its huge battery
life. In our light use tests, with the screen set to half brightness,
the Chronos lasted a very impressive 9 hours and 36 minutes. This is one
of the longest battery scores we’ve recorded, so you should get a full
day’s work out of it before you need to recharge it.
It has two USB3 and two USB2 ports. One USB3 port acts as a PowerSave
port that can charge devices when the laptop’s switched off. It also
has a VGA and HDMI port for connecting it to an external display, a
Gigabit Ethernet port, an SD card reader and a combined headphone and
microphone jack.
Unusually, we didn’t feel the need to use a pair of external
speakers, with the Chronos, as its internal 4W JBL speakers are some of
the best laptop speakers we’ve heard. Despite being located underneath
the main chassis, they provided lots of volume and the bass was
surprisingly rich in our test tracks.
The Samsung Series 7 Chronos is a hugely impressive laptop. It’s
expensive, but with near desktop levels of performance, a competent
graphics processor and a massive battery life, it’s also great value. It
truly deserves its Ultimate award.
| Part Code |
NP780Z5E-S01UK |
| Review Date |
31 May 2013 |
| Rating |
|
| Processor |
Intel Core i7-3635QM
|
| Processor clock speed |
2.4GHz
|
| Memory |
8.00GB
|
| Memory slots |
2
|
| Memory slots free |
0
|
| Maximum memory |
12GB
|
| Size |
23x376x250mm
|
| Weight |
2.5kg
|
| Sound |
Realtek HD Audio
|
| Pointing device |
touchpad and touchscreen
|
| Viewable size |
15.6 in
|
| Native resolution |
1,920x1,080
|
| Graphics Processor |
AMD Radeon HD 8870M
|
| Graphics/video ports |
VGA, HDMI
|
| Graphics Memory |
2,048MB
|
| Total storage capacity |
1,000GB
|
| Optical drive type |
none
|
| USB ports |
4
|
| Bluetooth |
|
| Wired network ports |
1x 10/100/1000
|
| Wireless networking support |
802.11a/b/g/n
|
| PC Card slots |
N/A
|
| Supported memory cards |
SD, SDHC, SDXC
|
| Other ports |
headphone out
|
| Carrying case |
|
| Operating system |
Windows 8
|
| Operating system restore option |
restore partition
|
| Software included |
N/A
|
| Optional extras |
N/A
|
